Ruth Parsons

Artist statement
I am a human on a quest for enlightenment and understanding. Art is what I do along the way, an expression of where I'm at. I am part of a whole. As Alan Watts puts it "We do not 'come into' this world: we come out of it, as the leaves from a tree. As the ocean 'waves' the universe 'peoples' ."

We are both an observing component and a subjective reflection of this 'whole', chips off the old block, essential participants in the evolution of consciousness as it contemplates and discovers itself.

Alex Grey in 'The Mission of Art' says "Like the seers and oracles of old, Art sings and shouts from the axis of truth to wake us up to who we are and where we are going, both as individuals and as a species." So I am a willing conduit by which the collective consciousness may express itself.

Sometimes I point out that which should be obvious eg the beauty of natures palette and processes demonstrated in something as simple as rust. Other times I have emphasised the stunning patterns that natural phenomena create, remaking crop circles with their aesthetic harmonic created via their geometry. Other times with delight, I have found marks within human actions (eg dance) which are also the marks nature produces via natural processes of growth (eg plant forms). To me these are all evidence of the mystery of life, energy acting for itself, to it's own tune, for it's own agenda.

Which brings me to my agenda for Terminus. My theme was to explore and bring into some visual form energy 'felt', creating a catalyst or mirror by which the observer might observe themselves and explore their own subjective expression of the collective consciousness.

So to the angel. Having lived in Nelson for some years I have to admit to some sarcasm toward the town. In the same way that colonial Nelson has been overlaid upon any previous history of the land, Christmas tree angels could be seen to be the symbol of Western tokenism toward any kind of belief in anything other than our 'god' of consumerism. Angels are for the top of the Christmas tree wheeled out but once a year. Nelson offers a smorgasbord of light-hearted spiritual options and fancies itself a little as some kind of new age melting-pot. And because that's where I perceive the town is at then the angel needed to be naive in order to make a space for a heart connection, a by-passing of the intellect, something child-like and accessible. Haulashore Island was a good spot from which the angel could overlook and 'bless' the town.

My second site was up the Maitai Valley in bush areas. Again I wished to express a spiritual take upon the land, putting into some visual form the energy which underpins life. And a quote by Werner Heisenberg best expresses why I used these forms created via geometry. "The smallest units of matter are, in fact, not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures or - in Plato's sense - Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics". And "We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning".

These three forms, pi, phi and the logarithmic spiral express the way that life creates itself. These equations can be found in everything organic and of this earth, including ourselves. They are the 'Creation Equations"!

And to finish with another quote from a poem by Wordsworth . . .
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things ;-
We murder to dissect

Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.